Saturday, December 6, 2008

Before & After

I really love the post processing work that so many of the SL artists do. It's amazing to me how they can take a plain SL photo and turn it into a work of art. I've been trying really hard to learn how to do better post processing work on my own photos, but believe me when I say that I have no artistic abilities. LOL I admire those with artistic talent very much! Before SL, I knew a couple of things about Photoshop - resize and crop. If I got fancy with it, I could lighten a picture. SL has really helped me learn new things because I get to see the work that SL artists do, and sometimes I ask questions about techniques they've used.

So last night some of the girls and I were out on the island ice skating and I was snapping some pics. I found one of myself that I liked, but the more I stared at it, the more it was like "Well, it's cute, but it doesn't look RIGHT to me."

As you can see, it's a nice enough picture. But little things just appeared weird to me. My rib cage is jutting out in a strange way. There's a line on my skate from the prims not touching exactly right. The ice seemed flat. There's no real highlights.

So I fired up Photoshop and just...well, started messing around. LOL I probably made 85 layers for this and that. I played with a bunch of things and in the end I came up with a photo that I actually really like. Now in NO WAY AT ALL is it comparable to work that others do. Believe me, if it were, I'd be screaming in happiness all over the place. LOL But for me, I think it's decent and I like it a lot. I'm especially happy with the highlighting on the legs for some reason.

Were you expecting something better? Sorry, my talents do not lie in art. ;) But I'M happy with it, so that's what counts.

If you do fab post processing work, don't be surprised if I end up in your IM box asking you how you did this or that! I'm on a mission to learn how to do better work on my pictures! :)

Oh, and in another edition of WTF is in Ali's head, I woke up with this song in my head today. I haven't heard it in YEARS. I apologize for the poor quality of this video, but man, it was hard to find.

Just a quick tip to expand your photoshop knowledge...prolly the most important post-processing tool (or one of, hehe) are layer blending modes (like screen, multiply, overlay, etc)...try making a copy of the layer, change its blending mode and then adjust the opacity and you can come up with interesting effects.

Just a random 'tip' that I'd like to use from photography - the rule of thirds.

Placing your subject off-center in the pic works well! I'd recommend such a crop. A vignette would bring so much more attention to the main subject instead of the surrounding (without it being obvious)

Art & technology are two sides of the same coin. I might even go as far to say (*gasp*) that technology is more powerful at producing 'art' when you learn what is 'attention-grabbing'.